The Liberal Democrats

Nick of time

The Lib Dems are having an identity crisis. Splendid

“NOT the tinny sound of the libertarian’s freedom—still less the dead thud of the socialist’s”, intoned Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, “but the rich sound of liberal freedom”. In an otherwise pedestrian speech that closed the party’s conference on September 26th, it was a bold passage. Partly because Britons generally have little taste for theoretical political talk, but mostly because the rich sound of liberalism is, these days, rather muffled.

Mr Clegg is deeply unpopular (see chart), as is his party. Mid-conference, the Times published a poll of voting intentions putting the Lib Dems on 10%, well down from the 23% they won in the 2010 general election. Sue Auckland, a party activist from Sheffield, shakes her head at the data, despairing at Mr Clegg’s “lack of credibility”. It was a mistake, she says, to form a coalition with the Conservative Party.

Members are “pensive”, says Mark Pack, co-editor of an influential Lib Dem blog. Most at the conference give Mr Clegg between six and 18 months to turn things around. A few optimists point to Margaret Thatcher’s mid-term woes. Ed Davey, the energy secretary, likewise proclaims that the Lib Dems are “not for turning” on greenery. That these broadly affable types are now echoing the Iron Lady suggests the party is getting used to power. This, and three other things, offer scraps of consolation to the doleful Mr Clegg.

First, the party has been unpopular before: the difference is that it is now in government. One survey from October 2007 put the Lib Dems on a dismal 12%. Around two-thirds of the public then considered them “basically a protest vote”. Lib Dem ministers spent much of the conference jigging delegates’ memories of those days. Jo Swinson, a rising star, delivered a slide show of past electoral leaflets. Being in power, she explained, meant that the party could actually do things.

Second, the collapse in the party’s support is not quite as bad as it seems, because it is not uniform. Where the party has MPs, support is holding up better. One senior figure suggests that Lib Dem MPs are building strong, independent local reputations not just despite, but because of, the party’s national woes. Next year’s local elections, he adds, are mostly in Tory-facing seats where the party’s decision to enter coalition is less controversial than in Labour-facing ones. There may be some “shy Lib Dems”: people who support the party but do not let on to pollsters.

Finally, two years in power have forced the party’s identity crisis into the open. The right-left divide, a product of the 1988 merger of the Liberal and Social Democratic parties, means the Lib Dems have no clear identity on which to draw when making policy. Past manifestos were long on opportunism and short on coherence. No surprise, then, that fewer than half of the party’s 2010 voters said they “saw themselves” as Liberal Democrats. The trials of coalition government having evidently seen off the protest vote, the party now urgently needs a core vote. Much conference chatter centred on the hunt.

Conveniently, a gap may be opening in the political centre. The Labour Party is flirting with illiberalism: Ed Miliband, its leader, talks of a more “patriotic” business strategy. Tory insiders hint at a return to populist measures on crime and justice in the autumn—sops to David Cameron’s unruly backbenchers. Between the two, there is growing space for what Richard Reeves, Mr Clegg’s former strategy director, has called “radical liberalism”: a social, economic and political rejection of Leviathan’s embrace. Mr Clegg, who is currently unchallenged as party leader, has a chance to drag his party into it.

The statist urge remains strong in the Lib Dems: conference delegates passed motions supporting new levies on unhealthy drinks, opposing new airport runways and rejecting plans to make it easier to build house extensions. Even a brilliant speech (and Mr Clegg’s was not) would not change the Lib Dems overnight. But Mr Clegg is right about the direction the party must travel if it is to become something more than a receptacle for discontent.